Cris Ramos

Real life is more than just the things that get neatly processed and fleshed out into written pieces or videos. It’s the day-by-day quandaries and successes, the moments spent chatting with your favorite people and the advice that becomes solidified in text message threads. These are those stories.

Please enjoy a series of insights, breakthroughs and random ways to remind us that we’re all just one text message away from figuring it out.

L [Tue, Aug 16, 11:20 AM] : My horoscope told me to chop off a piece of my hair to put it under a pillow and dream on it for 5 nights lmao guess who did that

Do you think we should still be listening to this guy ????R [Tue, Aug 16, 11:23 AM] :

L [Wed, Aug 31, 10:12 AM] : I’m glad.. When you put them together like that, they’re kind of beautiful My current mantra btw: you are me and I am youTapping into we are all source energy principle. It’s kind of annoying and I don’t know why it’s happening lol but it is.

R [Wed, Aug 31, 10:15 AM] : That’s really powerful….I miss Saturday mornings at your house after a night out lol random thought i know. There was some excitement to feeling “unsolved”

And very young lol I dunno why I’m still young but feel the weight of being almost 30

Feels like we all have to be so serious now. We’re adult people???

L [Wed, Aug 31, 10:18 AM] : I confess I may always feel ten yrs younger though. Which places me at 19. Lol how can I get married have babies and do real work at 19

R [Wed, Aug 31, 10:20 AM]: Haha I think there’s wisdom to staying young. When you’re young you act like you have more time and possibilities ?

I’m starting to have to pluck out the same 2-3 gray hairs on my head btw.☠

L [Wed, Aug 31, 10:25 AM]: Yea. I’m ready to find a simple job and live my simple life for as long as it takes.

Lmao you keep plucking ????✨

R [Fri, Sept 9, 11:00 AM]:

She still doesn’t… ?✨

L [Fri, Sept 9, 11:02 AM]:: ?✨

Do you have your own text message breakthroughs you want to share? Do you wanna text with us?! Visit our submission page and send us your ideas or tell us about yourself.

“In a world of excess and clutter, you just want to connect with your own soul,” said Jiwan Kaur, a Kundalini yoga teacher and avid practitioner of the ancient science.

Prior to writing about the Kundalini Yoga Festival, I had no knowledge of the practice. Like most Westerners, I’d dipped my toes into the pool of yoga and found that while some had names like Prana and focused more on breathing, the experience itself was similar. Powerful though it may be, the specifics were lost on me.

I didn’t understand why Kundalini was different, but I did understand living in a world filled with clutter and trying to anchor myself despite it. This, says Kaur, is the main distinction of Kundalini: its power to help you become aware.

“We are living in a world where everything is connected. We all have a vibration and the power to transform that frequency,” she says. “That’s what Kundalini can do.”

Through sound, movement, meditation and mantra, Kundalini harnesses your Shakti, or innate primal energy, raising your vibration in order to help you focus and find your own truth. Often referred to as a technology, the practice is rooted in science and appeals to the more goal-oriented yogi.

At a glance, it looks different than the yoga we have been exposed to. When Kaur talks of raising our frequency, she’s referring to our biology as much as our spirituality. Chanting and music are heavily woven into the practice– creating a transcendental state. Combined with the repetitive movements, or Kriyas, which are meditation exercises involving breath and movement, you have an experience that only loosely resembles the mainstream picture of yoga. This is not the yoga we see in Instagram. It’s methodical and noisy, and it leads to immediate breakthroughs that would otherwise take someone years of psychotherapy, life coaching and personal work to come by.

“Anyone can do it,” Kaur coos. “Young, old, flexible or not. If you can’t perform a movement, look to the person next to you. They will gift you your posture. If each of us did something for someone else in the world, we’d all be at a different level.”

What she means is a higher level, and evidence suggests Kundalini can accomplish just that. Each Kriya has been handed down from ancient scientists and has a purpose. The movements are designed to generate an outcome in our lives; the mantras develop vibrational effects in the brain and nervous system and the breath accesses the nervous system in ways we normally cannot.

“The sounds open up our ability to be receptive. We can reach an internal space that unlocks our creativity, enthusiasm and clarity,” she continues.

This distinction is worth noting. While all yoga can change your life– a basic understanding of how movement and meditation affect our body proves this– Kundalini is about alchemizing energy.

Our energy is the most important part of creating the life we want and finding the time to make it happen. It’s why we work out, it’s why we drink coffee, it’s why we go to bed early– we’re constantly trying to refuel our reserves so we can get things done. Best selling Author and Cartoonist Scott Adams cites in his book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, that energy is your most important metric on the road to success. We should never sacrifice any of our goals, we should raise our energy in order to accomplish it all.

Have you ever had a day you’ve felt so depleted and hopeless, only your bed and Netflix will satisfy you? Say, for example, on that very day you received amazing news. You’ve just won a grant that will allow you to quit your job and sail around the world. I’ll bet you’d get up immediately, turn off you TV and begin to call friends. That energy has been inside you all along; you only have to find it and harness it. This is how Kundalini can help you: it is specifically designed to raise your energy.

You can try it for yourself this month at Miami Beach’s first ever Kundalini Yoga Festival. Mark Memorial Day weekend on your calendars and buy your tickets now. The festival will be held at North Miami Bandshell and will feature various classes for kids and adults, as well as its famed music. Picture beach views, chanting, mediation and live music. Good vibes all around.

Kaur will be teaching her class: All you need is Love. Love is all you need! Fall in LOVE with Mantra & Meditation & the sacred sound of the GONG. The practice will include chanting, ancient sounds and mantras.

“If you’ve never tried Kundalini, have an experience,” Kaur says to all who are curious. “Don’t listen to me or even this article. Take a leap and get to know yourself better.”

It was Monday morning at the Pamm Perez Art Museum and the freshness of a new week was everywhere.

I always wondered who could come to museums and experience art during the week while the rest of the world sits perched in their cubicle taking orders, filling spreadsheets and making society go round one logistical keystroke at a time. Today, I am that person.

Children wearing matching shirts run past me and the rush reminds me of being a student. Learning, experiencing and the encouragement to look at something that was pretty without words like “results” being tied to it; being allowed to feel something without justification or goals, simply curiosity and experimentation. That’s what unreserved gifted me in this museum at 11 AM on a Monday morning.

unreserved is a location-based audio art experiment. It presents a location-sensitive composition of original music layered with recorded voices and sounds, creating a sonic art collage. The geo-sensitive app allows you to listen and contribute to an audio sound collage– basically letting you to share experiences with other users who were walking exactly where you are days or weeks ago. It’s an incredible app that allows us to transcend time and space, and it gives art another dimension.

I turned on unreserved and walked the PAMM halls listening to the thoughts of those who had previously walked these same halls before me. Some of the installations had changed and yet it didn’t matter. In an instant the tourists and few scattered children disappeared. I was alone and bearing witness to someone else’s artistic breakthrough.

I saw the shoes behind their stitched little corners and suddenly the image of looking down at my grandmother’s feet came to mind. Why do all Cuban ladies wear the same shoes? How interesting the artist chose to stitch them into place, almost like the shackles and restraints that generation faced as immigrants.

I took a few more steps…

Heartbreak. I feel heartbreak in this piece. The colors, the movement, the eyes. Don’t we feel that intense sorrow when our human heart breaks? Don’t we feel that pain like blood bursting through us? We make marks on our heart when we take chances and feel.

It was connection on another level entirely. Unreserved is an experiment. It is more than an app– it’s a tool to experience life and get glimpses of how other people experience it.

When you record something, you are contributing an audio footprint that someone else will listen to when they walk exactly where you are. When you listen, you will hear someone pour their soul, record ambient conversation, recite a poem or sing a song. Despite you never knowing them and probably never meeting them, you share this private moment right where you are.

If you live in Miami and do not read, recite or listen to a poem in April, something has gone seriously wrong –– The New York Times

This is Miami in April. Our sunny metropolis is converted into a literary playground and O, Miami is the ringleader. Across our town – with no areas spared, not even the urinals in public restrooms – poetic words are thrust into our day-to-day lives in hopes we the public will be inspired. And inspired we have been, since O, Miami Poetry Festival has brought culture to the people we have been enthralled.

Larry on the lawn

This year, when O, Miami opened its month-long tour de poetry to the public, Yo Amo 305 answered the call. We believe so strongly that Miami is a cultural capital, a unique place where fantastic things happen that are so great, we literally couldn’t make it up. We’re not trying to be New York; we’re not a “more tropical” LA; we are Miami.

In a year of politics and a town so polarized by its views, this seemed like the perfect place to begin. Each election year, candidates make Miami one of their first stops. Florida, the famous swing state for losing count of its nearly half-split citizen voting powers, is a natural player in any presidential election. And you know what campaigns mean… a storm of rectangular signs strewn across South Florida lawns each advocating for its candidate. To inject poetry into this prosaic landscape is to capture the attention of passionate people and redirect it to a different idea…. What if we weren’t reduced to a political system that puts us into a box? What if we are all more complex than a series of penciled in responses at the voting booth?

To highlight the contrast between such famous personalities, like Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, we chose a largely unknown and underrated poet, the deceased Larry Levis. A writer’s writer, Levis was known for his thought-provoking work, exactly the kind of pause-and-react response we were looking to elicit. This April is about introducing locals to Levis’ beauty and genius in a place we typically encounter strange and somewhat detached messages. We have no agenda or demand, only the hope that Miamians will take a moment to consider that we are more than a construct of one-sided political views; we are art.

This is about celebrating what makes Miami unique. Cafecito is a cultural event that happens every day–– at multiple times–– and brings people together. Rain or shine, Miamians will go grab their espresso with 150% certainty. Infusing poetry into such a sacred ritual is to open a door into someone’s heart and provide an opportunity for artfully curated words to etch themselves in the smile lines of those who read it.

The arts expand people’s minds and perspectives; a crucial component to any major metropolitan city is art. This is a puzzle piece Miami is missing in some ways. While we are quickly catching up with neighborhoods like Wynwood and initiatives like O, Miami Poetry Festival, our Millennial metropolis has still a ways to go. Without focusing too much on what Miami is lacking, as we are in no shortage of criticism, we wanted to highlight what makes it such a vibrant, unique place; so we chose the famed Hialeah Haikus as the poems to paint across our coffee cup canvases.

It was nearly 8 PM after a long day when I grabbed the already opened bottle. Quick sniff let me know this wine had life in it yet. I poured it into the glass, my creative refuge; it was now time to take a few sips.

Within minutes the honesty poured out of me, but not my own, my character’s. It came from a place deep inside, and this was mine. I felt the bitter grape taste on my lips and that welling up of emotion in my heart. I put my thin hand against my chest letting it all settle in. Confusion, hurt, pain, memories, love, hate, happiness, clarity, they all felt present. My head was a mess, but a creatively functional one. This raw feeling was fuel. I felt as if I was converting the demons, which lived somewhere in the back of my mind always following me wherever I went. They were with me at my job in the moments I felt unfulfilled or confused. They were with me on my commute home when I was alone in the car and no one answered their phone. They were there when I showered. They were there when I went out to a bar with friends trying to escape. The shadows never left but my ability to tap into them did, until I was not sober.

I didn’t fight it those years when I needed to escape. A few glasses, a slight edge, that’s all it took. I was never sipping cough medicine or drinking at work. It was a nighttime recreational activity. A way to access a place that my mind would not allow me to on my own. I wanted the high. I needed the permission. I had to become disarmed.

After months, I stopped. It was for stupid reasons like calories, but the curiosity never left me. Why did I need to be intoxicated to be free? I knew of so many artists that needed help to reach this place. Hell, many of the greats. Is it an artist cliche? Was there truth to it? I was caught in between two schools of thought, and the part of me that knew I needed this justified it.

We are creatures filled with inhibition. We’ll never walk around fully present, and there’s always a cloud hanging over us. When we sleep, when we drink, when we puff, the cloud is lifted and our monsters come out. You better be ready for them.

The other side of me, which was just as strong, said otherwise. This side was just getting into Eastern culture, yoga, meditation, and it told an entirely different story. Here, it was possible to live in the moment. Within this school of thought, it was realistic to believe that one day I could walk around free; no muck, no walls, just authentic existence. Both of these concepts were competing for space in my mind, the debate increased, especially in those moments before writing. The discourse on whether or not to open the bottle grew.

Eventually, the calmer voices and their promise of mental freedom won. I found myself putting the bottle away and trying to access my demons sober so I could still convert the hurt into something beautiful; a story. I felt myself begin to focus less on the conversion of anxiety and more on the end result. Someone is going through the same things I am, and they’ll read this story and take comfort. We’re not alone, we are one. But those thoughts were opposite of the ones I was trying to put on paper. Thoughts that we are definitely alone. We can only trust in ourselves. We are the only solid investment we have. Before long, the debates ended and the story was left untouched. I couldn’t finish because the end was unclear. Where we all one? Was transformation possible? Or, was it all a silly illusion? There’s just “what is” and the sooner we recognize that, the faster we will thrive. The faster we will fly.

I finished the story eventually. The ending, like life, falls somewhere in the middle. Most people don’t know our inner battles because we show the world one face. I’m sick of that.

Perhaps, we can trust no one and it’s true, we’re alone from the moment we’re born till the day it all ends. Perhaps, we are never alone; we’re all connected and can take part in a vast resource of one human consciousness. I’m not anyone’s maker or here to answer this. I don’t think anyone can. We’re here fundamentally to know this for ourselves. We’re meant to reach the end of our long or short lives here and find this out. I do believe in the end our entire existence and everything in it, from jobs to relationships to hair choices, will all have been the culmination to this: seeking our truth.

I finished the thought with a smirk. I was sober. It was like the moment at the end of Inception, when the spinning top doesn’t fall–– or does–– it’s up to us to decide what’s real.

Miami has been an open format of sorts, a canvas transforming before our very eyes. Wynwood is often cited as the recent pioneer of this change, and it’s certainly produced some of the city’s most noteworthy projects and initiatives. As with any area, once it becomes “a thing” the outskirts are where the most interesting activities lay.

We’ve seen this happen with Brooklyn, which was the funkier more potent version of its famously oversaturated Manhattan (and that has since been replaced with Queens). It never fails: if you want to get to know the truest expression of an area… visit its outskirts.

Case and point, the Gesamtkunstwerk. To call it a building would take away from what it’s striving to accomplish. The Gesamtkunstwerk is encapsulated by its name, a German word meaning “total work of art”. The word refers to a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms; or strives to do so. In the same spirit, the multi-disciplinary creative initiative located west of the Wynwood Arts District in Miami, FL lives up to its name.

The Gesamtkunstwerk project was designed to give a curated group of businesses and individuals, who were influential in the development of Wynwood as an arts community, with the long-term stability needed to continue their efforts. The building houses a diverse range of tenants that include Butter Gallery, Wynwood Radio, product/81 creative lab., Plataforma, Panther Coffee and WynwoodMurals.com

In preparation for Miami Art Week, the Gesamtkunstwerk’s creative inhabitants have an exciting week of cultural and artistic ventures planned. Don’t miss out…

YOAMO305 RETAIL SHOP

Miami’s favorite Pop Up Shop finds a new casita. Browse snazzy YoAmo305 swag while sippin’ some cocktails and jamming to live music. Open 12-5 pm

FORDISTAS GALLERY

The unveiling of unreserved, a location-based participatory audio art experiment developed by sound artist Halsey Burgund, fellow at the MIT Open Documentary Lab in collaboration with Fordistas for Miami Art Week 2015.

The launching of unreserved is an innovative and immersive experience combining space and sound where everyone is an artist.

We invite you to contribute to the creation of
an acoustic collage and interact with voices layered in geographic space as you participate in the making of something beautiful by downloading unreserved today on the iTunes app store.

Join us as we listen to your unique contributions.

#Fordistas Gallery

2930 NW 7th Ave, Miami, FL 33127

fordistas.com

THEESATISFACTION

Live 12.01.15

Along with

Guest DJ Nicki Monty/Atlanta

BUTTER GALLERY

Recent work by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh and Diana Larrea

Tatyana Fazl
alizadeh’s work moves effortlessly between the street and the gallery. Her street art series, Stop Telling Women to Smile, has garnered attention around the world for bringing light to street harassment and women’s rights via visual art.

Diana Larrea
“One of the most rewarding aspects of my work is to witness the interaction between the street artist and his surroundings, the complex dynamics of community and how ephemeral their work can be. Through photography I have witnessed the honest and sometimes wild side of Miami’s urban culture.”

AT THE PROJEKTRAUM

Dianna Grace

“My work explores the relationship between abstract and organic objects, drawings, paintings, and photographs.”